Quiz 3: Friday; Open Book

Planetary Material

Multiple Choice (~27 questions)

Final Assignment:

All remaining assignment work dueFriday

Course Survey:

Tomorrow: Last Part of Class, bring your grade 2 pencils

Solar Radiation

The Sun emits throughout the electromagnetic spectrum, and the different parts of the spectrum control the structure of ouratmosphere.

While intensity varies greatly, each component plays a role in the structure of our atmosphere

Charged and Neutral Structure

Why the different layers?

• Balancing act betweenGravity (downward drag)

andPressure (ability to expand outwards)

"region of mixing" and is so named because of vigorous convective air currents within the layer.

Troposphere

Visible light is absorbed by the ground

Energy reradiated in the form of Infrared and this energy heats the troposphere

The troposphere contains 99 % of the water vapor in the atmosphere.

All weather phenomena occur

within the troposphere

Top of the tropopshere is called

the Tropopause

8 km in high latitudes, to 18 km

above the equator.

Its height also varies with the

seasons; highest in the summer

and lowest in the winter.

Top of the Troposphere

Neutral Atmosphere

Storm Cloud(Cumulonimbus)

Anvil

HorizontalWinds

Stratosphere

Troposphere

Layered region: between 10 and 50 km above the planet's surface. Stratosphere

Region is heated by the Absorption by Ozone of Ultraviolet Radiation

Therefore temperature increases with ozone concentration.

Little Convection

Strong Horizontal winds

Approximately 90 % of the ozone in the atmosphere resides in the stratosphere.

UV that is absorbed would otherwise be harmful to life because they can be absorbed by the nucleic acid in cells.

Increased penetration of ultraviolet radiation to the planet's surface would damage plant life and have harmful environmental consequences.

Appreciably large amounts of solar ultraviolet radiation would result in a host of biological effects, such as a dramatic increase in cancers.

Mesosphere

Decreasingtemperature decreases 190-180 K (-83 to -93 0C)

Layer between 50 and 80 km.

Radiosonde - an instrument package that moves through the atmosphere, usually attached to a balloon, and transmits data over a radio frequency

Mesosphere

concentrations of ozone and water vapor are negligible.

the atmosphere becomes enriched with lighter gases.

At very high altitudes, the gases begin to form into layers according to molecular mass (weight), because the force of gravity is greater on the heavier molecules.

foreign bodies (such as meteors and spacecraft) entering the atmosphere start to warm up.

Red Sprites • Sprites are massive but weak luminous flashes extend from the cloud tops to altitudes up to about 95 km

•occur in decaying portions of thunderstorms and are correlated with large positive cloud-to-ground lightning strokes.

• Short lived – 1 ms, total power 10-100 MJ and 5-50 GW

•The temperature increases with altitude up to 1000-1500 K.

•This increase in temperature is due to the absorption of EUV/Xrays by the limited amount of remaining molecular oxygen.

•At an altitude of 100-200 km, the major atmospheric components are still nitrogen and oxygen.

•It is within the thermosphere that the aurora phenomena may be observed.

Thermosphere

Most distant atmospheric region: extending several thousand km into space.

The region represents a transition between Earth’s atmosphere and interplanetary space.

Gas in the region have attained sufficiently high energy that they are in orbit around the Earth

Neutral density in the region falls below the density of ionized particles, or plasma.

Exosphere

From IMAGE

Layered Atmosphere

Neutral and charged particles in the ionosphere